Sao Paulo, Brazil – A 9-year-old boy was rescued unhurt after spending six days at the bottom of a well 20 meters (almost 66 feet) deep, Brazilian authorities said Monday.

Thiago Souza disappeared Dec. 19 when he was going home to Guarulhos, a suburb of Sao Paulo, after taking lunch to his father who was working at a nearby farm.

Firefighters searched for him unsuccessfully for two days and, when hardly any hope was left of finding him alive, his family discovered him at the bottom of the well on Christmas Day.

“I thought my son would be found dead. I had no hope that he was still alive,” Thiago’s mother, Vanda Souza, told Globo television.

Members of the boy’s family said that on Christmas Day they set out on their own to search for him, and heard his voice coming from a hole in the ground almost entirely covered by vegetation.

After discovering the well in which he had fallen, they begged him to stay calm until the firefighters came. Hours later the rescue team managed to get him out of the well and he was taken to the Guarulhos General Hospital, where doctors said that he was in good health dispite suffering severe dehydration as well as a few scratches.

“This is a miracle that I can’t even put into words,” said the boy’s father, the farmer Benedito Aparecido Souza, who has 10 other children.